The pipeline was lying to us
Our trackers showed stale statuses, so I fixed it with a daily habit and a standing briefing instead of a new tool.
Our project trackers showed statuses such as bidding and awaiting funding that no longer matched reality. Real decisions were riding on stale data, and nobody had noticed.
I began reconciling both trackers every day. In place of ad hoc updates, I gave the partners a standing briefing with a two-week lookback. I did not try to solve it with a better tool.
A tracker nobody trusts is worse than none, because it manufactures false confidence. The fix was cadence, not a new system: check it every day, and do not hope you remember what is true.
The two-week briefing and the daily sync rebuild began the same day. In the same pass I noticed internal documents going out as raw formatting, not something a partner could sit down and read, and I fixed that too.
A tracker earns trust only if someone checks it daily. Otherwise it records what used to be true. I wanted my partners making good decisions, so I would not let a convenient-looking dashboard stand in for checking reality every day.
Story details
| Project | Xtrata |
|---|---|
| Type | Mistake and repair |
| Year | 2026-05 |
| Firm telling | on the Common Ground wiki |